Law Commons^™

Constitutional Law -- Due Process Clause -- Third Circuit Holds That $50 Million Punitive Damages Award In Context Of A $48 Million Compensatory Award Is Unconstitutionally Excessive -- Inter Medical Supplies, Ltd. V. Ebi Medical Systems, Inc., 181 F.3d 446 (3d Cir. 1999)., A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

In 1996, the Supreme Court, in BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, struck down a punitive damages award on the ground that it was "grossly excessive" in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment . Since BMW, many courts have faced the challenge of applying its principles to determine whether punitive damages awards surpass the constitutional limit. Last June, in Inter Medical Supplies, Ltd. v. EBI Medical Systems, Inc., the Third Circuit faced this difficulty when it considered whether a $50 million punitive damages award, granted in conjunction with a $48 million compensatory damages award, was …

Confidentiality, Privilege And Rule 408: The Protection Of Mediation Proceedings In Federal Court, Charles W. Ehrhardt

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Courtroom Technology In The 21st Century, Fredric I. Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Juries, Hindsight, And Punitive Damage Awards: Failures Of A Social Science Case For Change, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

In their recent Arizona Law Review article entitled What Juries Can't Do Well: The Jury's Performance As a Risk Manager,' Professors Reid Hastie and W. Kip Viscusi purport to show that juries are likely to do a poor job in setting punitive damages, largely because jurors cannot avoid the influence of what is called "hindsight bias," or the tendency to see the likelihood of an event higher in retrospect than it would have appeared before it happened. In particular, they argue that hindsight bias and other cognitive biases undermine the utility of jury-set punitive damage awards as risk management devices. …

The Earmarking Defense To Voidable Preference Liability: A Reconceptualization, William H. Widen, David Gray Carlson

Articles

No abstract provided.

A Laboratory For Collaboration: Where, Why And Why Not?, Ken Salazar, Felicity Hannay, Steve Sims, Ted Kowalski

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

12 pages.

Nebraska V. Wyoming: The End Or Collaboration?, Wendy Weiss, James Montgomery

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

13 pages.

Contains footnotes.

A Western Slope Perspective: Endangered Species And Municipal Water, David C. Hallford

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

13 pages (includes 1 map).

Contains footnotes and 1 page of references.

Indian Water Rights And The Snake River Basin Adjudication, Peter C. Monson

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

19 pages (includes map).

Idaho's Snake River Basin Adjudication: A Window On Western Water Law, Jeffrey C. Fereday

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

34 pages.

Contains footnotes.

Federal Water Rights In The Snake River Basin Adjudication, Michael A. Gheleta

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

34 pages (includes maps).

Federal Facilitation Of Water Rights Negotiations In The West, Mike Connor

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

11 pages.

Do Basin-Wide Adjudications Work, For Tribes Or Anyone Else?, Reid Peyton Chambers

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

3 pages.

Colorado Water Courts: Should They Change?, Melinda Kassen

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

12 pages.

Contains references.

Colorado Water Courts: Where Are They?, Jonathan W. Hays

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

16 pages.

Colorado Water Courts: Are They Changing?, Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr.

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

56 pages.

Basin-Wide Adjudications In The West: What Works, What Doesn’T?, Ramsey L. Kropf

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

18 pages.

Contains 2 pages of references.

Agenda: Strategies In Western Water Law And Policy: Courts, Coercion And Collaboration, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center, University Of Colorado Boulder. Center Of The American West

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

1 v. (various pagings) : ill., maps, charts ; 29 cm

Conference organizers, session moderators and/or speakers included University of Colorado School of Law professors Gary C. Bryner, James N. Corbridge, Jr., David H. Getches, Douglas S. Kenney, Lawrence J. MacDonnell, Kathryn M. Mutz and Charles F. Wilkinson

Includes bibliographical references

The event will examine the principal problem-solving strategies in western water law and policy: courts, coercion and collaboration. In addressing this broad range of strategies, the program will focus on national, west-wide and Colorado-specific issues.

Conference activities will commence with a free public program cosponsored by the Center of …

The Platte River Cooperative Agreement: A Historical Perspective, Ann Salomon Bleed

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

No abstract provided.

The Democracy-Forcing Constitution, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Comments On Rooker-Feldman Or Let State Law Be Our Guide, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

I feel privileged to have been asked to be a commentator on the three principal papers in this symposium. These are three excellent papers, and although there has been some valuable commentary on the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, there will be no need to go beyond these papers to gain a full appreciation of the doctrine, its applications, and its problems, which run as deep as the problems of any doctrine.

The Road To The Virtual Courtroom? A Consideration Of Today’S -- And Tomorrow’S -- High Technology Courtrooms, Fredric I. Lederer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Municipal Responsibility For Constitutional Torts, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The fundamental principle in the law of municipal liability under § 1983 is that municipalities may be held liable only for their own conduct, not for the conduct of municipal employees. Stated somewhat differently, municipalities may not be held vicariously liable for the conduct of municipal employees but rather can be held liable only when municipal policy is the moving force behind the violation. While this principle is simple to state, it has proven difficult to apply.

Is Progressive Constitutionalism Possible?, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Progressivism is in part a particular moral and political response to the sadness of lesser lives, lives unnecessarily diminished by economic, psychic and physical insecurity in the midst of a society or world that offers plenty. This insecurity is unjust and should end; the suffering should be alleviated, and those lives should be enriched. To do so must be one of the goals of a morally just or justifiable state. Not all suffering and not all lesser lives, of course, give rise to such a response. The suffering attendant to accident, disease, war and happenstance is neither entirely chargeable to …

Judicial Politics, Death Penalty Appeals, And Case Selection: An Empirical Study, John H. Blume, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Several studies try to explain case outcomes based on the politics of judicial selection methods. Scholars usually hypothesize that judges selected by partisan popular elections are subject to greater political pressure in deciding cases than are other judges. No class of cases seems more amenable to such analysis than death penalty cases. No study, however, accounts both for judicial politics and case selection, the process through which cases are selected for death penalty litigation. Yet, the case selection process cannot be ignored because it yields a set of cases for adjudication that is far from a random selection of cases. …

The Interplay Of Race And False Claims Of Jury Nullification, Nancy S. Marder

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Myth Of The Nullifying Jury, Nancy S. Marder

All Faculty Scholarship

Jury nullification, an issue that has received much public attention, has been used loosely to describe verdicts with which members of the press and public disagree. One aim of this article is to explain what nullification is and to identify and describe three different situations in which nullification is likely to arise. Another aim is to offer two conceptions of the jury before assessing whether nullification is helpful or harmful to the judicial system. One conception, "a conventional view," largely held by judges, regards the jury as a fact-finding body and little more. My own conception, which I have labeled …

On The Received Wisdom In Federal Courts, Evan Tsen Lee

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Substance Abuse, Families, And Unified Family Courts: The Creation Of A Caring Justice System, Barbara A. Babb, Judith D. Moran

All Faculty Scholarship

This article proposes an approach to family law decision-making tailored to assist families plagued by substance abuse. Substance abuse is linked to social, health, and economic problems facing Americans today and is a factor for a substantial number of family law litigants. By failing to address substance abuse issues, the family repeatedly may need to seek court intervention. The unified family court model is the concept of a single court that coordinates the work of independent agencies and tribunals, each with some limited role in resolving the problems incident to a family's legal matters. Professor Babb has created an interdisciplinary …

How Imperial Is The Supreme Court? An Analysis Of Supreme Court Abortion Doctrine And Popular Will, Michael Vitiello

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.